


we were built to fall apart (then fall back together)

by PassionateKey



Category: The 100
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Divorce, Established Relationship, First Dates, Freeform, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 12:44:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3134963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PassionateKey/pseuds/PassionateKey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy and Clarke are the worst and best thing to ever happen to each other. And sometimes when you love something you have to let it go. And sometimes when they love you back they still come back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we were built to fall apart (then fall back together)

**Author's Note:**

> I've picked up a habit of writing at four in the morning and editing the next morning, but sometimes I miss things, so sorry for the mistakes.

They were amazing together. Moving rhythmically to music only they could hear, they made a great team. Clarke didn't believe in love at first sight, but when she was with Bellamy it was something more then just lust. He completed her in ways she didn't understand, in ways that scared her, but even then she pushed forward and she never regretted it. Because Bellamy was everything she needed when what she needed was release and freedom, and he was good at it.

 

•

 

They were toxic together. They'd been together long enough to know what combination of letters and sounds hit the lowest. Bellamy knew how to make Clarke cry with less then two sentences. Clarke knew how to render Bellamy speechless in less then five words. They were absolutely poisonous to one another, but was it really love if it didn't hurt a little? They had been together long enough to make them wonder if they were only in it for the fear of being lonely. Sometimes late at night after making up Bellamy would lay starring at the ceiling wondering if it was really worth it. If all the pain was worth the way the sun hit Clarke's hair in the mornings or the happy sound she made when he nuzzled her neck over breakfast. Lately it was more of push-pull between them both, and Bellamy had to wonder how long till one of them finally snapped.

 

•

 

When she walked into the bar that night Bellamy knew he was a goner. Her smile demanded the attention of every man in the room, but her eyes only sought his. She sauntered over to him and his friends almost immediately, pressing up against the bar, tossing her long blonde curls over her shoulder, before giving the bartender a smile.

"I'll have whatever he's having," she drawled, lazily raking her eyes over his body.

Bellamy smirked, downing the rest of his shit beer. "I'll take another too."

The bartender slid over to bottles before moving on to higher paying costumers down the row. Bellamy took a moment to watch her lips wrapped around the bottle as she chugged what he knew wasn't worth the six bucks each bottle was costing them.

"The name's Bellamy." He grinned once she put the bottle down.

"Clarke," she licked her lips. 'What brings you out tonight?"

 

•

 

On their first official date Bellamy took her to a gallery opening.

It was the first time in a long time that Clarke let herself enjoy a night out with a handsome man, and he had more then surprised her. When he'd initially asked to let him take her on a real date Clarke had looked at him like he'd grown a third head. He was supposed to be a quick and easy up against the gross bathroom wall and suddenly he was asking her on dates. The vulnerability in his eyes had her saying yes.

When he takes her hand, in the tight black button up he's wearing, she's glad she accepted.

"You remembered," she whispered as they enter the building. The artist is a local man but the name of Monty Green. Clarke had met him a couple times while working on her newest project, he mostly did street art, covering old and abounded building with beautiful and interact designs, but his traditional work was equally as breathtaking. 

"Of course princess."

That night at the bar, before the sloppy makeouts in the bathroom, they'd sat drinking and sharing small details about their lives. Clarke had shared that she was an artist and was dying to go to the new gallery opening downtown. Bellamy had shared that he was a writer working on a new novel.

 

•

 

Their first Christmas together Clarke gets him a first edition of Moby Dick. Bellamy manages to pull some strings and gets one of her pieces hung at an up-and-coming artist gallery thrown by the mayor.

 

•

 

The fight leading up to their last is about the most comical thing that Bellamy can imagine.

He forgets to buy more dog food.

He walks in with everything else Clarke had insisted they need on her very detailed grocery list, but dog food had somehow invaded Bellamy's mind and ten minutes later she's yelling at him about the time a couple of months ago he got drunk and missed out on dinner with her mother as he stares directly at a not even half empty bag of fucking dog food.

 

•

 

The first time she tells him she loves him its on accident one night when they're wasted beyond belief and he's pressing kisses down he neck.

 

•

 

He tells her that same night when he thinks she's fallen asleep as he presses a kiss to her hair, just like he has every night for the past month when she's actually been asleep.

 

•

 

The first time she tells him she hates him, she spits it in his face and reminds him that he is nothing but an asshole, which is why Octavia left. 

It's a low blow but it gets the point across and when she finds him sitting outside, downing his sorrows in a bottle of Jack, she cries because that's her fault.

 

•

 

For their first anniversary Bellamy plans an intimate dinner, nothing flashy or extravagant, because neither one exactly had the money to spend for it. At the end of the night as Clarke doses off wrapped naked around him, he can't think of a better place to be.

The next morning over coffee and cigarette smoke he asks her to move in with him and he doesn't deny that the small smile on her face as she nods once and says okay, makes him feel like a little kid at Christmas.

 

•

 

He leaves for two weeks at the end there and crashes on Murphy's couch, only returning after she drunkingly texts him one midnight that she's sorry.

She's kisses him when he enters smelling of yesterdays alcohol and it tastes bitter in his mouth.

She shouldn't be the one apologizing and he knows it.

 

•

 

"How about, I let you see my newest painting if you let me ready your newest article."

Bellamy considers it, biting his lips and Clarke smirks because she knows she's got him.

"Okay," he drums his fingers on the table. "But, I want you to be honest with me after you've read it."

Clarke nods her head. It's the same transaction every time. He tells her if her painting is bearing too much soul or not enough soul and she tells him if he's writing isn't the real him or some whitewashed version that people expect to read. They work well together. He types away in the quiet of their den and she bashes away in the ruckus of her studio and they meet somewhere in the middle. Sometimes literally, with passionate love making on the kitchen floor.

"Deal."

 

•

 

Later that team work turns into ways to tear each other down. He tells her no one wants to buy paintings by a fucked up girl and she tells him no one wants to read words from a high school dropout. 

 

•

 

He proposes a random day in October, with no ring, but an unspoken promise to love her everyday as much as he can. She says yes.

 

•

 

In the end he never breaks his promise. He loves her everyday as much as he can until he can't anymore. Clarke never hates him for it.

 

•

 

They get married just as spontaneously as they got engaged. They wake up one beautiful day in June and it's the day. Clarke buys a lace, formfitting white dress with an exposed back, that goes up to her knees and Bellamy wears his only suit. Octavia and Lincoln even show to be the witnesses. When the four of them emerge from city hall, Clarke can't help but wish her father had been there, and Bellamy kisses her hair hearing her loud and clear.

No one can throw a last minute party like Raven, and when they arrive home after Octavia shared the news, all their friends are there to celebrate it with them.

 

•

 

They never go on a honeymoon because they don't exactly have the money and Clarke throws it in his face one night, even though they both know they never cared about it before.

 

•

 

"Ever think of having kids Clarke?" Bellamy asks as he lightly runs his fingers up and down her arm.

Clarke shivers at the contact and snuggles closer to his chest. "Mm," she responds content with the warmth around her. "Maybe one or two."

Bellamy lets a grin spread across his face and doesn't try and mask all the emotions currently running through him, Clarke has that affect on him.

"Wanna get started?" He teases, placing a palm on her waist.

 

•

 

She cries for three weeks when they lose the first one, and when she returns to her studio Bellamy notices that her painting aren't as bright as they used to be.

 

•

 

If Clarke is being honest, she can pinpoint that as being when it all went downhill.

 

•

 

At the end there, when he gets wasted and angry, he throws that in her face to make her hurt.

She always cries herself to sleep.

Muffles apologies haunt his dreams.

 

•

 

She doesn't let herself cry when they lose the second one. 

He breaks things.

 

•

 

That Christmas he buys back the very first painting she ever sold and hangs it in their living room. She gets his poetry bound and engraved.

 

•

 

They live in a some sort of limbo for a while. The calm before the storm. He kisses her shoulder every morning as she drinks coffee. She tells him he loves him every night, fingers intertwined. They don't talk about how they aren't trying anymore.

 

•

 

"Will you still love me when I'm only and saggy," she sticks her tongue out at him and Bellamy can't help buy laugh at how cute she looks, wrapped up in a blanket on the kitchen floor.

"I'll still love you even when you're bitter and mean."

 

•

 

"Will you still love me when my jokes have spoiled and my hair has thinned," he winks at her, teeth chattering as he dries the dog out from the rainstorm they got caught in.

"I'll still love you even when you're regretful and drunk."

 

•

 

When she walked into the bar that night Bellamy knew it was over. Her grimace pushed away the attention of every man in the room, but her eyes sought his. She sauntered over to him almost immediately, pressing up against the bar, tossing her long blonde curls over her shoulder, before giving the bartender a smile.

"I'll have whatever he's having," she drawled, lazily raking her eyes over his body.

Bellamy smirked, downing the rest of his shit beer. "I'll take another too."

She sets the papers down between them, before the bartender even has a chance to slide two bottles over. Bellamy takes a moment to notice the bags under her eyes and the way her hair looks dead in this light before he takes a swig of his beer.

He signs where she tells him too and then she leaves all without touching her beer. Bellamy downs hers and eight others before stumbling back to his now one bedroom apartment.

 

•

 

They pull out all stops in their last fight. 

Bellamy throws the miscarriages in her face and Clarke hurls his families abandonment in his.

They both cry and scream and break stuff and then cry some more, this time into each other's arms.

They make passionate love one last time on the kitchen floor, putting everything they can't say into it. For a moment Bellamy thinks maybe they can work through this, but knows deep down that they're way past help.

He leaves in the morning, kisses Clarke goodbye and tells her that he loves her.

She says it back before shutting the door behind him one last time.

 

•

 

Two years pass and Bellamy hears through Octavia that Clarke's engaged to some man named Finn Collins and he's happy for her. Though that night he lays awake, as Roma sleeps gently next to him, wondering why he really isn't happy for her.

That same year his book gets published and Clarke muffles her cries in her and Finn's bathroom as she reads the story about a rebel king and a princess who scarfed each other so the other could have their happily ever after.

 

•

 

When she walked into the bar that night Bellamy knew he was a goner. Her smile demanded the attention of every man in the room, but her eyes only sought his. She sauntered over to him and his friends almost immediately, pressing up against the bar, tossing her long blonde curls over her shoulder, before giving the bartender a smile.

"I'll have whatever he's having," she drawled, lazily raking her eyes over his body.

Bellamy smirked, downing the rest of his shit beer. "I'll take another too."

It's been seven years and yet she's still as beautiful as he remembers. Her blue eyes still shine every time she cracks a shit joke, and she still blushes at anything remotely sounding like a compliment, and her beauty never leaves her.

"Where do you think we went wrong?" she whispers, against the bottle pressed to her lips. Bellamy notices there's no ring on her finger.

 

•

 

"I think maybe we loved each other too much," she snorts, of course Bellamy the writer would say something obnoxiously poetic. "And then that love turned against us."

Clarke nods her head, watching as Bellamy looks out into the crowd around them. His features haven't changed much, he still scrunches up his nose when he talks about his writing and runs his hands through his hair when he's nervous, and he's still the same handsome man Clarke fell for all those years ago.

"I was such a bitch to you at the end, I'm surprised you didn't leave sooner." She cringes at the way her voice cracks at the end, she's not supposed to be feeling sad tonight.

Bellamy laughs. "Are you kidding me Clarke, I turned into the biggest asshole of all time. I'm surprised you stayed."

Clarke shrugs, wincing at the memory of their last fight,  even after all those years, every memory with Bellamy was always so vivid. "Misery loves company." She raises the bottle to her lips.

"I'll drink to that." Bellamy mutters, taking a swig out of his.

 

•

 

"Did he treat you better then I did?"

Clarke shakes her head, knowing instantly who Bellamy is referring too.

"That's a damn shame." 

This time it's Clarke who laughs. "Nothing I have with anyone else will ever compare to our tragic love story Bell."

Bellamy grins at her, reaching across the bar to squeeze her hand,

"Plus, Finn never wrote a book about it," she smirks.

 

•

 

He groans into his hands, pulling away from Clarke's leaving her missing the contact, and Clarke thinks it's the cutest thing ever. "What did you think I wouldn't read it?" She tries to sound outraged, but the laughter in her voice gives it away. She doesn't tell him how she has a bookshelf filled with nothing but his work, published or unpublished.

He shrugs, signaling the bartender for two more beers.

"I almost didn't," she admits quietly.

 

•

 

He nods understanding the pain across her face. He almost didn't write it. But just like the painting he had of hers hung across his living room and the one in his study and the one in his bedroom, he had to get what he was feeling out onto paper.

"You think we could have done better?"

"Probably," he sighs. "But that's all in the past."

 

•

 

"Maybe in the future?" Her eyes are sparking when he finally looks up.

"Maybe in the future." He greets her with a smile, and Clarke feels like she's falling all over again.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was loosely inspired a tiny bit by The Vow, but mostly by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the 1989 album.


End file.
